Cobb, Geraldyn ("Jerrie") M. (1931–)

Leading female aviator and the first woman to undergo the same physical
and psychological fitness testing regimen as the Mercury Astronaut Selection
Tests. Her participation in the Mercury
Project and later manned programs, for which she was at least as well
qualified as the men who were selected (see Mercury
Seven), was prevented because of sex discrimination (see Mercury
Thirteen).

Born in Oklahoma, Cobb first flew at the age of 12 in the backseat of an
open-cockpit biplane, a 1936 Waco, flown by her father. By age 16, she was
barnstorming around the Great Plains in a Piper J-3 Cub, dropping leaflets
over small towns announcing the arrival of an circus. She slept under the
Cub's wing at night and scraped together the gas money to practice her flying
by giving rides.

She gained her Private Pilot's license at the age of 17, her Commercial
Pilot's license on her 18th birthday, and then began looking for a flying
job. However, with the return of so many male pilots after World War II,
and the discriminatory attitude to women, she was forced to take on less
popular flying jobs, such as crop-dusting and pipeline patrol. She went
on to earn her Multi-Engine, Instrument, Flight Instructor and Ground Instructor
ratings as well as her Airline Transport license. By age 19, Cobb was teaching
men to fly, and by 21, she was delivering military fighters and four-engine
bombers to foreign Air Forces around the world.

Following a three-year romance with another pilot, which ended tragically
with an explosion of his airplane over the Pacific, Cobb went on to set
new international records for speed, distance, and absolute altitude while
she was still in her twenties. When she became the first woman to fly in
the world's largest air exposition, the Salon Aeronautique Internacional
in Paris, her fellow airmen named her Pilot of the Year and awarded her
the Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement. Life Magazine named her one
of the nine women of the "100 most important young people in the United
States."

In the infancy of the Space Age, when the United States began selecting
the first astronauts in 1959, Dr. W. Randolph Lovelace
II invited Cobb to undergo the physical fitness testing regimen that he
had helped to develop to select the original US astronauts – the Mercury
Seven. She became the first American woman to do so and proved every bit
as successful in the tests as had John Glenn and the other Mercury astronauts,
passing all three phases with flying colors. Thereafter, Cobb and Lovelace
recruited 25 other qualified women pilots. Jacqueline Cochran, the famous
American aviatrix and an old friend of Lovelace, joined their recruiting
effort and volunteered to pay the testing expenses. Twelve of the chosen
women passed the first series of tests; however, the American space program
did not open the ranks of its astronaut corps to women until 1978.

Cobb was appointed by NASA Administrator James Webb
as consultant to the nation's space program in May 1961, but NASA's requirement
that astronauts have military jet test pilot experience eliminated all women
since women were not allowed to fly in the military. A year later, the Soviet
cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became
the first womena in space.

Cobb has been honored by the governments of France, Brazil, Colombia, Peru
and Ecuador. President Nixon awarded her the Harmon Trophy as the top woman
pilot in the world. For her many years of humanitarian work in the Amazon
rainforest, delivering supplies to native tribes, she has received numerous
honors and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She remains in excellent
health and continues to fly on a regular basis.

[This
entry is based partly on a NASA Quest article and on information from the
Jerrie Cobb Foundation.]